The Very Secret Diary of Petunia Evans
by Storychan
Summary: Harry always wanted to know more about his mother's past. But he never asked the woman who knew her better than anyone-her sister, Petunia! Turns out Petunia had a LOT to say...
1. Chapter 1

The Very Secret Diary of Petunia Evans

A Harry Potter Fic By: Storychan

Summary: Harry always wanted to know more about his mother, Lily. But he never thought to ask the woman who knew her best….her sister, Petunia! Turns out Petunia had a LOT to tell…..

Warning: This is a diary format fic from a really villainous canon character, Petunia Dursley's, point of view. Expect Victim!Petunia, Villified! Lily, and Lovable!Vernon. Possible Potter-bashing. Rated T because of the awfulness Lily is accused of. Takes place in Lily's childhood. Eventual Petunia/Vernon, Lily/Snape, and Lily/James! There will be DH spoilers.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

R & R!

Ever since he'd seen Snape's memories at the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had wanted to know more about his mother's life. He'd seen a glimpse of her childhood in Snape's head, but he wanted more. None of his parents' friends really knew what Lily had been like before she arrived at Hogwarts. Snape could probably tell him a lot about his mother's early life….but Snape was dead. Harry slowly realized that only one person could answer his burning questions…..and that person was one he'd vowed never to see again.

His Aunt Petunia.

He'd been at the Burrow for a while since Voldemort was vanquished, just thinking about it all….his mother, Snape, Voldemort, how their lives had shaped his….How their decisions had helped him live to save the world. When the thought to question Petunia had eventually occurred to him, he quickly realized Petunia would never agree to meet with him.

So he begged Mr. Weasley to visit his abandoned old home (if you could call it a 'home'….it was more of a reluctant residence), 4 Privet Drive, and find some artifact that could give him answers.

Mr. Weasley didn't want to. They weren't supposed to ever go back there- plus, he was busy with work. But Harry begged with such frequency that at last Mr. Weasley agreed. Harry would be happy if Mr. Weasley found some photos of his mother as a child that Petunia hadn't burned, or even a picture of the house she'd grown up in.

He didn't expect much to be found.

Thus, when Mr. Weasley returned that evening, Harry felt apprehensive. "Did you find anything at the house?" he asked.

"Your mother's maiden name was Evans, right, Harry?" Mr. Weasley replied cryptically.

"Yes," Harry nodded. "So?"

"I think you'd better take a look at this," said Mr. Weasley said, holding up a small, dusty black book, its spine coated with tape and cheap glitter.

"What is that thing?" asked Harry.

"Read it," replied Mr. Weasley, holding it out to him. Harry gingerly opened the first page, eyes narrowed with suspicion. In the childish scrawl of a little girl were the long-ago written words _The Very Secret Diary of Petunia Evans. _

"Your aunt probably wrote this when she was a little girl," said Mr. Weasley. "Meaning your mother was a little girl at the time too."

Harry's eyes, so much like his mother's, widened. It was the perfect window into his mother's early past!

Eagerly, he turned the first page. The first words he read stunned him.

_Lily is my favorite person._

"Her favorite person?" repeated Harry, incredulous. "Aunt Petunia called her a freak! That doesn't make any sense."

"I guess you'll have to keep reading in order to figure it all out, Harry," said Mr. Weasley sagely.

"Yeah," said Harry. "I guess I will. I'd love to see a time when Aunt Petunia _didn't _insult my mother whenever she spoke of her," he said angrily. Aunt Petunia had been awful to him. He hoped he could stomach reading her words long enough to figure out the secrets of his mother's childhood.

Shaking his head, he continued reading:

_Lily is my favorite person._

_She's my big sister. She's ten right now, so next year she's going to middle school. She says we can transfer to St. Martha's Academy, because at St. Martha's, primary school would be in the same building as her, and we'd be together still. She wouldn't have to leave me!_

"But Mum DID leave her," Harry realized. "The year after Aunt Petunia wrote this, Mum went to Hogwarts without her."

He wondered if that was the beginning of the rift between them.

_She wouldn't have to leave me! _Harry read again, emerald eyes widening. How did Petunia go from never wanting her sister to leave….to pretending she didn't HAVE a sister? He kept reading:

_I don't like being anywhere that Lily's not._ _I don't like talking to people…..I prefer to just listen, to tune in to the wonderful conversations everybody else is having. That's why Lily calls me "Tuney"…not just because it's part of my name…"PeTUNia." It's also because she knows I'm always tuned in, and will always be there to listen to her. I love her so much!_

Harry struggled to wrap his brain around that. Petunia had once _loved _Lily? Obviously, he realized, that love had turned to hate long before he was born. He wondered how as he returned to reading:

_Lily is always smiling…she's so nice to everybody. I'm too shy to really be nice….I mean, I want to be nice, but usually I just stand in the corner while Lily says nice things to people, and I nod. I wish I could be more like her._

"No, you don't," said Harry aloud. "You never wanted to be a witch like her, Aunt Petunia! You wanted nothing to do with her OR me!" He took a deep breath. He'd heard of his mother's kindness before…it made him smile to think she was always like that. But he still couldn't figure out what had changed his aunt so much since she'd written those words he now read. How did Tuney, the girl who wanted to be like his mother, become Aunt Petunia, the woman who refused to even talk about her? Shaking his head, he kept reading:

_Lily says she'll never leave me, and we'll be not just sisters, but friends. Lily has lots of friends, but I don't. I'm glad she's going to St. Martha's with me next year…I don't know what I'd do if she ever left._

"I do," said Harry, closing the book for a moment. "You'd start hating her so much that years later, when her child showed up on your doorstep, you'd try to make sure he-I- never went to Hogwarts. Because Hogwarts took my Mum away from you."


	2. Chapter 2

The Very Secret Diary of Petunia Evans, Chapter 2

By: Storychan

**Wow. I started writing this fic two years ago and then totally forgot about it. Or, rather, nobody seemed interested in it, so I abandoned it in favor of projects that had more readers. But, a couple days ago, queenofthekingdom favorited, followed, and reviewed this fic, and that was enough motivation for me to end the hiatus and start writing again! So, thanks, queenofthekingdom ! I hope this chapter gets me lots of new readers just like you :3**

**Enjoy, everyone, and don't forget to review!**

**-Storychan**

Molly Weasley found Harry moodily staring at the diary as he sat curled up in an armchair by the fire in the corner of her living room.

"Want to take a break for some dinner, dear?" she asked gently.

Harry shook his head. "No, I was just about to start reading again. I was just taking a moment to…digest what I've already read."

Aunt Petunia had loved his mother. That was hard for Harry to even imagine, seeing as how she'd refused to speak to him about his mother even once during his entire childhood. She seemed to resent him just for being Lily's child, having Lily's eyes. Even the memory of Lily seemed to bother her. But, Harry considered, maybe what actually bothered her was that she felt so alone when Lily went to Hogwarts without her. Harry could understand how it felt to be alone. Yet, he wouldn't say he sympathized with Petunia, exactly. After all, she was at least fifty percent of the reason his childhood had been as lonely as hers.

"Alright, you can keep reading if that's what you'd like, Harry," Mrs. Weasley said understandingly, patting him on the shoulder. "I'll bring you a plate of something over here so you can read while you eat. I shan't have you skipping meals."

"Thanks, Mrs. Weasley," Harry said appreciatively. Mrs. Weasley was the closest thing Harry had ever had to a mother. Lily had died before he was old enough to remember anything about her but her dying screams. Petunia, though she was, technically, the woman that had raised him, she had never treated him like a son. She fed him and clothed him, yes, but she never doted on him like she did Dudley. Harry was sure that had Lily lived, she would have been an equally doting parent.

Lily. That was the person who Harry was trying to understand by reading this book. Not Petunia. He refused to let this book change his perception of her. A sad backstory didn't excuse eleven years of neglect. Sighing, he turned the page and began to read again at the next entry:

_I don't understand what's happening. Lily got a strange letter today from someplace called Hogwarts. It says she's a witch! That's crazy! Witches only exist in storybooks, don't they? They're supposed to have green skin and warts and stuff and Lily isn't like that at all! This must be a mistake!_

Lily was a Muggleborn, Harry recalled. Even though he was technically a pureblood, seeing as both his parents were wizards, he hadn't known about the existence of magic until he'd gotten his Hogwarts letter, either. Or, in his case, letters, because Dumbledore had known somehow that Vernon and Petunia would stop the first letter from reaching him. He had a very clear memory of crying out in alarm as Petunia ground up one of his letters in the blender. Was this the day, he wondered, that had made her despise Hogwarts letters so much? The letter must have changed Lily's life as profoundly as it had his.

_Mum and Dad said somebody named Dumbledore contacted them and explained to them that Lily is something called a Muggleborn. I still don't want to believe it. Because, I mean, she's my sister, isn't she? It doesn't make sense that she could be a witch when I'm not. _

Harry wondered for a moment how the Muggleborn gene worked. Or was it even genetic? Had there been some witch, generations distant, in the Evans family tree that passed on wizardry to Lily? Or did magic just pop up randomly and turn some people into wizards, but not others? Life would have been very different, he considered, if Petunia hadn't been born a Muggle. Or, perhaps she did have the wizard gene, but she was just a Squib. In a non-wizarding family, how could one really tell the difference?

Mrs. Weasley returned and set a plate of shepherd's pie and a cup of tea on the arm of chair.

"Thanks," Harry muttered and took a forkful before he continued to read:

_They say Lily has to go to this Hogwarts place to learn how to be a witch. But she can't! She can't, she can't, she can't! She has to go to St. Martha's with me! She has to be there for me when I need her! I need her so much. I don't know how to live without her. She's been by my side, every day, since I was _born. _They can't make her be separated from me. I won't allow it. _

"You can't stop it," Harry found himself muttering aloud as he sipped his tea. Lily _did _leave Petunia and go to Hogwarts. All of Petunia's whining wouldn't change a thing. He flipped a page to a later entry:

_I told Lily I didn't want her to leave me. I figured she wouldn't want to go to this Hogwarts place at all, because it would mean we'd be apart. I told her if she doesn't want to go, they can't force her to do it against her will. _

_But she looked at me and she said, "But doesn't it sound exciting, Tuney? Real magic! Can you believe it? The letter said that first years learn to fly on brooms! Can you picture it, Tuney? Me, flying? And I get my very own magic wand, like in a storybook! And in third year I'll take Care of Magical Creatures, so I can pet a real, live unicorn! Did you know that unicorns really do exist, Tuney? Isn't it the most amazing thing you've ever heard?"_

_She sounded so…excited. Excited to go to this place where I wouldn't be. Does she just not want to be around me anymore? Have I done something wrong? When I got the news that she'd be leaving, I went into my room and cried for hours. Why isn't she crying? How can she be happy that we'll be at different schools for the first tme EVER?! And Hogwarts isn't a school you come home from at the end of the day, like St. Martha's. It's a boarding school. That means I won't see her at school _or _at home. Once she leaves, I won't see her again until Christmas. How can she be alright with that? Does she hate me?_

Harry was certain that Lily didn't hate Petunia. He wasn't sure his mother was capable of hating anyone. She didn't seem to have a mean bone in her body. Her excitement probably had nothing to do with leaving Petunia. It was learning she was magical that must have distracted her from everything else. Harry still remembered the moment Hagrid had growled at him, "Yer a wizard, Harry." That moment – the moment he found out he was special – had been life-changing. Harry had had no happy Muggle life to leave behind, but he figured if he had, like Lily, he still would have done it. He'd never heard of a Muggleborn refusing to go to Hogwarts for any reason. How could you refuse something as wonderful as magic school? He figured, deep down, Lily hadn't wanted to leave Petunia. The realization that that they'd be separated probably hit her later, after the newness of the news that witches existed wore off. At that point, maybe she had cried.

Harry shook his head. Why was he trying to justify the way Lily treated Petunia, anyway? He hated Petunia. He shouldn't care whether or not Lily made her cry, decades ago. She certainly wasn't crying over her sister anymore. Harry started on a new entry:

_Lily is always hanging around that Snape boy now. _

"She's talking about Professor Snape…" Harry realized. It was still strange to him that Petunia and his mother had known Snape since they were kids.

_Why does she go and sit by the old tree with him? She's leaving soon, so shouldn't she be cherishing the time she has left with me? _

_She says he's a wizard, too. I can't believe it. Aren't wizards supposed to have long, white beards and pointy hats? _

Harry chuckled. Dumbledore was the only wizard he'd ever met that fit that description.

_I guess that's why Lily likes him. He's magic, like her, and I'm not. I'm a Muggle, whatever that means. I guess it means I'm not special. She sits and talks to the Snape boy for hours about how cool things at Hogwarts will be, and what classes they're going to take, and what house they think they're going to be in. _

_There are four houses at Hogwarts, apparently, called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. I started thinking about which one I'd be before I remembered that it didn't matter, because I'm not going. I'm going to St. Martha's all alone. _

_Why does Snape get to be a wizard? He's just a stupid, greasy-haired boy in clothes that don't fit. Why does he get to go with Lily when I can't? Why does he get to be happy?_

"But he's not happy," Harry muttered. "Eventually, he lost Mum, too." Harry wished he had Snape's diary instead of Petunia's, so that he could see the days when Snape and Lily were happy together, before everything went wrong. But, he supposed beggars couldn't be choosers. He was lucky to have even this glimpse of his mother's past.

Harry turned the page. Suddenly, a piece of paper fell out of the diary! It was in different handwriting than the diary entries. Looking at the entry next to where the paper had fallen out of, Harry read, _Lily has been gone a month now. She sent this letter. _

Harry gasped. The paper was a letter written in his mother's hand! Yes! This was the sort of thing he'd been looking for: a window into Lily's early life. He unfolded the letter and began reading, imagining his mother's voice, which he'd heard in the graveyard the night Voldemort returned, saying the words:

_Dear Tuney, _

_Hogwarts is so amazing! _

Petunia probably didn't want to hear that, Harry considered. It would only make her feel worse.

_Wish you were here with me. _

So did she, Harry bet.

_Sev got sorted into Slytherin almost immediately. _

She was talking about Snape again.

_I don't know much about the houses here, but everyone says Slytherin is bad. But Sev isn't bad, so maybe they're wrong. For a moment, I kind of wanted to be sorted into Slytherin just so we could be together, because he's the only person I know here. A lot of the other kids grew up in wizarding villages, and so they know each other already. I started to worry I could never worm my way into these pre-established cliques. _

_But, the Sorting Hat (it's a hat and it talks and sings! It's amazing!) told me I didn't have a Slytherin heart. It said I wasn't like Sev, which made me kind of sad, because there's nothing _wrong _with the way Sev is. _

Snape wasn't a jerk back then, Harry realized. He may have been interested in the wrong sort of magic, but he must have been a good kid. Lily wouldn't hang around a bad kid, after all. He wondered, silently, if Snape would have stayed good if Lily had been in his house, keeping an eye on him. Or maybe choosing Slytherin would have made Lily go bad, too. It was a moot point, because Harry knew what Lily was going to say next:

_I got sorted into Gryffindor._

"Like me," Harry whispered.

_I didn't know any Gryffindors at all, so I was kind of nervous as I walked to the Gryffindor dining table, wondering who I was going to sit with. What if nobody wanted to be next to me?_

_Then, suddenly, a kid with messy hair and specs called out to me and said, "Oi, sit with me and my friends, redhead girl!"_

_I told him my name wasn't "redhead girl", it was Lily Evans. He told me his name was James Potter. _

Harry almost dropped the letter in excitement and shock. "That's how my mum met my dad!" he said gleefully. He'd always wondered about that. This is was the sort of thing he'd made Mr. Weasley go fetch the diary for!

_His friend, who was sitting next to him, introduced himself as Remus Lupin. He was reading _Hogwarts, A History. _I asked him if I could borrow it sometime, seeing as how I'm a Muggleborn and don't know much about wizarding history at all. He said yes. He seems really nice. I sat between James and him. _

"_And this is Sirius," said James, pointing to a friend of his who was busy stuffing his face with chicken that had spontaneously appeared on the table. "Pwe's'r t' meet you," Sirius said through a mouthful of food. He had his feet on the table and he kind of smelled like wet dog. _

_There was another boy at the table, but he was too shy to introduce himself. He was kind of fat and had really watery-looking eyes. James said his name was Peter. _

"Wormtail," Harry hissed. Knowing what he would eventually cause his mother's death made Harry wish that their meeting, which he'd just read about, had never occurred. He wished he could jump into the letter and tell Lily to never speak to Peter Pettigrew again. But, all he could do was keep reading.

_My new roommate is named Alice, and she's super nice. She introduced me to her friend from back home, Frank Longbottom. _

"She's talking about Neville's parents," Harry realized.

_As friendly as all these Gryffindors were, all I could think about was when I'd see Sev again. I was so happy when I found out he was in my Potions class! He seems really good at the subject. Professor Slughorn told him what a natural he is. _

"Good enough to take Slughorn's job from him someday," Harry murmured. "Though it's not the job he really wanted."

_Potions is surprisingly easy for me, too. Professor Slughorn said that was interesting, since I'm a Muggleborn and all. Sev looked like he was going to agree, until he saw my face. I asked Alice if Muggleborns are usually less good at magic than other wizards. She made a face and said no. _

"Hermione was a Muggleborn, too," Harry grumbled. "And she was the best witch in my year. Anyone who says otherwise is a prat."

_Anyway, other than that, everything's going great. More than anything, I wish you were here, Tuney. _

_Love,_

_Lily_

Petunia didn't just love Lily, Harry realized. Lily had loved her back. Losing Lily's love had made both Petunia and Snape into bitter, mean people. On the other hand, gaining Lily's love had saved Harry's life when he was an infant.

Love was a funny thing, he decided. But, he wondered if, at the end of this, he might begin to love his aunt, after all.


	3. Chapter 3

The Very Secret Diary of Petunia Evans, Chapter 3

By: Storychan

**This is short, but I was on a roll and wanted to crank it out before I went to sleep! It's half past one by the way…sorry if my sleepiness has negatively affected the quality of this chapter.**

**Enjoy, and don't forget to review! Oh, and thank you to Robin Rani for your lovely review of the previous chapter! **

**-Storychan**

Mrs. Weasley ambled over to whisk away Harry's now-finished plate of food. He was flipping through his Aunt Petunia's childhood diary, once again.

"Shouldn't you be getting to bed, dear?" Mrs. Weasley asked maternally. "It's getting rather late."

"Oh, um, I'd actually like to read a little more," Harry insisted.

Mrs. Weasley frowned.

"He's seventeen, Mum!" Ron called from the other room. "And he just saved the whole bloody wizarding world, didn't he? Let him do what he wants."

Mrs. Weasley sighed. "Very well. But just one more entry tonight, alright?"

"Alright," Harry grinned, and continued reading:

_I've started my first term at St. Martha's, and it's miserable. All the other girls make fun of me because I'm so quiet, and because they say my long neck is ugly. They keep comparing me to a dinosaur. If Lily were here, she'd make them leave me alone._

Harry would never have guessed that his aunt had been a victim of bullying, just as he had in his pre-Hogwarts days. He supposed the old saying about bullied people becoming bullies themselves had some truth to it.

_After school, I went to the old tree where Lily and that Snape boy used to hang about. Before she met him, she used to sit there with _me. _But like I said, she had no time for me anymore once she started talking to him about wizard stuff. But, I still wanted to go sit where she once sat, just to feel close to her. Isn't that a bit pathetic?_

Harry didn't think it was pathetic at all. If he could find the tree his mother had once sat under, someday, he'd probably get sentimental and want to sit under it, too. The difference was that he wanted to do it because Lily was dead. Petunia had had such mournful inclinations when her sister was still alive, just far away at Hogwarts.

_But, you won't believe this. When I went to sit under the tree, there was a boy already sitting there who I'd never seen before! He was wearing a Smelting's uniform. I heard they're one of the nicest schools in town. _

Harry still remembered the stupid Smeltings uniform Dudley wore, down to the accompanying walking stick he'd smacked him with. He'd be graduating from that school next year, Harry realized.

_I hadn't expected anyone to be there, and I'd been thinking about Lily, and so by the time I'd got there I'd started crying, and he saw me! How embarrassing! _

"She was still crying about being apart from Lily, over a month later…" Harry realized. "She must have cared about her a lot. What happened?"

_I thought the boy was going to make fun of me, like the people at school, but instead he pulled a hanky out of his pocket and handed it to me. He asked me what was wrong. _

"_My sister," I said. "She's gone to boarding school without me. It isn't fair!" _

"_Why would she do that?" the boy frowned. _

"_Because it's a special school for w…." I stopped myself. I'd almost said "witches". Mum and Dad told me that we can't tell anybody that Lily is a witch. If any Muggle who isn't in the immediate family of a Muggleborn witch or wizard finds out about magic, they'll have their memories erased! Apparently, the rules about exposing magic are very strict, and the person who exposes it will get in big trouble, as well. _

Harry recalled exactly how much trouble he and Ron had gotten into when they'd almost exposed magic by driving a flying car through the skies of London in their second year. He couldn't believe how relatable this diary was becoming for him.

"_It's a special school for….wise people," I made up on the spot. "Really smart kids. I wasn't smart enough, so my sister went without me."_

_Why was I confiding in a total stranger?! I didn't even know this boy's name!_

"_What a _bitch_," the boy declared. "How dare she?"_

_I gasped. Mum would slap me if she heard me use that kind of language! _

"_Don't call my sister that!" I snapped, turning red._

"_Why're you defending her?" the boy scoffed. "She ditched you like you were nothing! That's real mean! If I had a sister, I wouldn't abandon her for some fancy school like that! If my sister did that to me, I'd pop her right in the nose with my Smeltings stick!"_

_This boy, who I didn't even know, was getting so angry for me on my behalf. It hadn't occurred to me to be angry at Lily. All I'd been was sad. _

"_If you can't go to this silly school," the boy said, "I think you should tell your sister she shouldn't go there, either. You should send her a letter, tell her what a wanker she's being." _

"_A letter…" I repeated. That gave me an idea. What if I wrote to that professor Mum had spoken to, Dumbledore? I could beg him to let me go to Hogwarts, too. After all, maybe I was a witch, too, and my powers just hadn't awakened yet! _

"No, you'll always be a Muggle," Harry sighed. For some reason, it made him sad.

"_If I tell him how much I need to be with Lily," I told the boy, "He can't say no, right?"_

"_Oh, is that your stupid sister's name?" the boy replied. He was a bit on the plump side, but he had very handsome fair hair. _

"_Yes, and – oh, I'm terribly sorry, to start unloading my problems without even introducing myself – I'm Petunia Evans," I said. _

"_Nice to meet you, Petunia," the boy smiled. "My name's Vernon Dursley." _

Harry almost choked on his tea. She was talking about **Uncle Vernon**? Harry couldn't believe that his uncle could ever be so nice to a strange, crying girl he'd found under a tree. Since when was he so empathetic? It seemed almost made-up.

But, Harry considered, parts of it did sound like the Vernon that Harry knew. He was quick to anger and to judge, fond of foul language, and suggesting that young Petunia behave as violently as he would. That, Harry supposed, sounded about right. But, in this case, you could almost say he was using his rage for good instead of evil, taking up the cause of a girl who, in his opinion, had been wronged.

"I guess he did have a shred of decency in him at some point in his life, after all," Harry scoffed. "Wonder where it went." But, for the first time, he could see why his aunt had married the despicable man the boy under the tree would become.


End file.
